An Introduction to SQL Server 2016 Query Store

By David Postlethwaite

David is delivering a talk An Introduction to SQL Server Query Store at SQL Saturday Iceland today - this post has been scheduled to coincide with his talk

If you are at SQL Saturday Iceland today go and see his session.

There will be a series of post with an introduction to SQL Server Query Store over the next few weeks. In this post at the bottom you will find a video of David's talk. Enjoy!

Let me start by asking you a question.

Have You Ever experienced system outage or degradation which you were expected to instantly fix?

You know the sort of thing where the database is responding slowly and the boss is standing over the top of you demanding you fix it.

He’s shouting “Get it fixed we’re losing customers and money.” But you can’t quickly see what’s going on

Have you ever been asked why a database slowed down this morning?

Why did it? What changed this morning.

And what changed since then to make it go back up to speed?

Have you ever upgraded an application to the latest SQL version and suffered performance issues?

Microsoft claim SQL 2016 is 30% faster so why has your database suddenly gone slow after you moved it to the shiny new server?

Have you ever released new code and suffered a slow down?

New code should run faster, right? But when you’ve released it to production its going slower and you can’t see why.

Have you ever experience unpredictable performance?

One minute its fast, the next minute is gone slow.

Have you ever wanted a way to track queries over time to see workload and workload patterns and changes from the baseline?

Have you ever wanted to be able to answer quickly questions like “Why has this query gone slow? What was the execution plan this morning compared to now? Why has it changed?”

Have you ever wanted to force SQL Server to use a different execution plan to the one it has now?

You’ve worked out SQL was using a different execution plan this morning. How can you make SQL use it this afternoon without rewriting code?

And keep it that way?

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Then SQL Server 2016’s Query Store maybe the answer!

You can view a recording of David's talk here, its 50 minutes long: